Wonderfully Unique

So far, Niffenegger has captivated and worried me all at the same time.

I'm a tad concerned because I can tell from the first few chapters that the book, by nature, is not as easy a read as I had hoped. Sure the language is simple, the diction is user friendly and won't take long to get through. But the story is much, much more. It is clear that the story is going to capture me emotionally. At times it is going to back track, details will be omitted, and gut wrenching, emotional scenes are going to take place. It might be easy TO read, but that doesn't make it an easy read. I can already tell that the book is going to get slow, get boring, then get wonderfully interesting. It's going to get sad, and get funny, and perhaps most of all, get frustrating at the things that the reader doesn't know or the things that Henry doesn't know.

And yet, I'm so captivated by the story. The very idea is so unique, so new. Time travel must have been done a hundred times. Alternate worlds? Boring! But this?! This is something so new and intriguing that I doubt that I could stop reading if I wanted to. I only worry that I'm ready for this book. It has all the making of am emotionally taxing read.

That being said, major props to Audrey for one of the most unique story ideas that I've ever stumbled across. I can't wait to see how it ends!

5 Comments

But don't you find that when you really are emotionally captivated by a story, it goes a lot faster because you don't put the book down as much since you want to keep reading? Niffenegger is really good at building the suspense and giving you tantalizing little glimpses of the future and then making you wonder how they get to that part of the future. The slow parts definitely went faster for me because I knew there were things that were going to happen that I couldn't wait to get to. I would have read it a lot faster had I not had a bunch of other things to do that kept distracting me. I was concerned when I saw how long it was, but having definite destinations that I wanted to get to (when are they going to get married? are they going to conceive?, etc.) made me read the book in big chunks and it went a lot faster than I thought it was going to.

On the one hand, I agree. I haven't been able to put the book down and even when I do, I find myself thinking about what will happen next.

At the same time, the book is touching on really deep concepts of destiny and determinism and I'm finding it difficult to go about my daily routine while wrestling with all of the issues that it is raising.

The story progresses in an interesting fashion. The whole concept of the serious progression draws the audience in further. It's like "Spider Man": as the story goes on the funny stuff in the beginning gives way to the much more serious responsibilities of a mature Spider Man.

This book is exactly how you described it. It's so hard to put down because you just want to find out more. Yes there are boring parts and you're like just get on to more interesting topics but at the same time it makes the story the story and it's great!

I'm glad to hear that you found the story compelling... I figured I needed something with a story that has a chance to compete with pleasant weather and the usual end-of-term crunch.

I actually wrote a time-travel romance short story when I was in college... it wasn't that good, but having thought carefully about the whole concept I was carefully looking for things such as exactly what is the oldest age we ever see Henry, and that drew me to the short sequence on pages 79-80, that Clare doesn't understand when she narrates it from her point of view. A couple of hundred pages later, that scene started to loom much more seriously in my mind.